Keyword Modifiers for New Keywords

Now let’s look at another simple way to find those keywords with clout. Clout being in the fact that we want phrases people are typing in with an actionable mindset.

I’m talking about keyword modifiers and also spelling mistakes. In other words, you have a phrase you like after doing some research but are still a little worried that the competition is a little high. Most times, you can solve this by adding a modifier.

For example, let’s use the example dogs again and choose one of the keywords we mentioned above. We’ll take “dogs that don’t shed.” Hmmmm…it’s got 2,620,000 results which is a bit high for our liking. But you want to promote a source which deals with this issue. So how do you narrow down the search numbers and give yourself a chance of ranking for this key term? Add a keyword modifier.

Here’s an example. For “dogs that don’t shed” we simply add the word buy. So we end up with “buy dogs that don’t shed.” Our search count has suddenly been narrowed from 2,620,000 to 359,000 which is much more comfortable when we go out and try to rank for it.

If you’re still not happy then revert back to your Google search box and start typing in “dogs that don’t shed.” In this example, we didn’t even have to finish typing the entire phrase. We got as far as “dogs that don’t” and Google has ingeniously figured out what we’re looking for. Here’s a list of extra keywords to think about.

Can you see the power of this. Suddenly, we have extra keyword phrases to optimize for. All bar “dogs that don’t shed much” look pretty easy pickings to rank for. Also notice the variations on the word “shed.” People actually search for this by also typing in “shead” and “sheed.” The same applies to the word “malt” as a related term to “shed”…the word “mault” is also used.

To take it even further, what if we leave the apostrophe out of the word “dont.” More good news. We get more juicy long tail phrases which we can optimize for such as:

And even better news is “dogs that don’t cast hair” with the apostrophe put back in only returns 262,000 results. There is almost no limit to the amount of keyword phrases you will come up with by using Google as your foundation for search. Instead of trying to game them, let them help you find the keywords people are actually looking for.

Here’s a list of common keyword modifiers you can add to your keywords to narrow them down. Use these when you want to narrow your search even further. Google does a great job of adding these into many of the search terms but if they don’t, try them and see what you come up with. This is only a short list and over time, you can build this group with even more words. Just make sure they make sense but any one of these will be a good fit for most search terms: